When AI writes cookbooks

[Jenise]

A fun article from The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/food/article/2024/jul/31/one-of-the-most-disgusting-meals-ive-ever-eaten-ai-recipes-tested

AI chatbots are nothing more and nothing less than bullshit generators. One of the first forays into this field was Joseph Weisenbaum's Eliza* program, which he developed 1964-1967 at MIT. Weisenbaum was working on the problem of computer recognition of natural language. Eliza worked by pattern matching and substitution and gave the illusion of understanding what the user typed in. One of the pattern matching scripts was DOCTOR, which simulated a Rogerian psychotherapist (in the Rogerian school the therapist often reflects back the patient's words).

I encountered Eliza and DOCTOR while in grad school in the mid-70s. It was amusing/bemusing for an hour or so. From what I've seen of ChatGPT and its ilk, it is nothing more than a sophisticated version of Eliza.

-Paul W.

* The name Eliza comes from Eliza Doolittle, the flower girl in Shaw's Pygmalion (later taken to Broadway and film as My Fair Lady.

This is both a fair and an unfair assessment of the technologies. Including ELIZA.

Ultimately, it is a computerized form of Mad Libs, if you recall that game. But it can be useful. For example, one of my workmates regularly uses ChatGPT to write awk scripts for him.